Scripture Reading: Prov. 1:1-6
Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Songs are particular books. With this message we begin the life-study of Proverbs.
Proverbs in Hebrew is mishle, meaning "similitudes, proverbs, parables," to represent general truths.
Proverbs is a collection of the words of the wise. The main writers and collectors are Solomon, who wrote three thousand proverbs (1 Kings 4:32; cf. Eccl. 12:9), and Hezekiah, who added some proverbs of the forefathers in chapters twenty-five through twenty-nine.
The time of the writing of this book was about 1000 B.C. Whereas Solomon's portion was written about 1000 B.C., Hezekiah's portion was written about three hundred years later.
Proverbs probably was written in Jerusalem.
The theme of Proverbs is that this book consists of words of wisdom teaching people how to behave and how to build up their character in the human life. Humanly speaking, this is the great subject, and all religions and philosophies are concerned with it. The matters of behavior and the building up of character have been the subjects of teaching ever since humankind came into being.
Now we need to consider the position of Proverbs in the divine revelation of the Holy Scriptures.
The divine revelation in the Holy Scriptures is progressive, from the creation of man in God's image in the first chapter of Genesis, through many processes in both the Old Testament and the New Testament, to the consummation of the New Jerusalem in the last two chapters of Revelation. Thousands of things are covered in the Bible. The first thing is God's creation of the heavens and the earth, and the last thing is the New Jerusalem. Between these two ends, the divine revelation goes along with the course of human history.
As Proverbs is a collection of the words of the wise of many centuries up to Hezekiah in the seventh century before Christ, it is difficult to locate it in the divine revelation of the Holy Scriptures.
Since the proverbs were collected mainly by two kings of Judah in the age of the law, the book of Proverbs may be considered a subsidiary to the law. The law is the portrait of God, demanding God's people to keep it that they might be made copies of God for His expression and glorification. Proverbs as a subsidiary to the law helps God's people to keep the law.
Because the law was written according to what God is, the law tells man how to behave and how to build up himself according to God's attributes. God is love and light, and God is holy and righteous. These are some of God's attributes. For God to create man in His own image means that God created man according to what He is, that is, according to His attributes. The law, which was written according to God's attributes, demands that man behave and build himself up according to God. Regarding this, Proverbs is a subsidiary part of the law, instructing people how to behave and how to build themselves up according to what God is. This helps us to see what the position of Proverbs probably is in the divine revelation in the Scriptures.
The sequence of the five books of poetry — Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Songs — in their spiritual significances is excellent and sweet.
Job stresses that God wants man to seek and gain God solely without any other blessings and prosperity, and that God wants man to seek Him for his perfection and not for his integrity. From this we see that God wants man to seek the kind of perfection that is God Himself, not a perfection based on human uprightness and integrity.
Psalms stresses man's seeking and contacting of God through his praises, prayers, and singing with exultation. The way to seek and contact God is to praise Him, to pray to Him, and to sing with exultation.
Proverbs stresses wisdom that man receives of God through his contacting of God and that teaches man how to behave in his human life.
Ecclesiastes stresses the vanity of vanities of all the things under the sun, which is realized by man through the wisdom received from God. The things under the sun are vanity, but the things in the heavens are reality. If you have contacted God and have received wisdom of God, you will see that everything under the sun is a vanity, a chasing of the wind.
Song of Songs stresses that Christ is the song of songs, the satisfaction of satisfactions to human life that is versus the vanity of vanities of all the things under the sun. Only Christ is the satisfaction, becoming our song which we sing to Him because we are satisfied. A lover of Christ should be one who is attracted by His love and drawn by Him in His sweetness to pursue after Him for full satisfaction.
The book of Proverbs is a particular book among the books of the Bible. It has a particular character; that is, it presents to us the words of wisdom by many ancient wise men, which is unanimously considered good by all the people who read it. But whether it is really good or not depends upon what kind of reader you are.
If you are an ethical person with a strong mind and have a desire to be perfect as a genuine moral person, surely this book would help you to make a success in your pursuit of perfection. But it helps you to cultivate yourself, that is, to cultivate the human "bright virtue" created for man by God according to His attributes, that is, according to what He is. However, it does not help you to be a person who lives in his spirit according to the Spirit of God who dwells in you for the accomplishment of God's eternal economy, that is, to produce and build up the Body of Christ which consummates the New Jerusalem as God's heart's desire and ultimate goal. In the Old Testament Job was exactly such a person. He was satisfied with his integrity, with his pursuit of human perfection. But that was not what God wanted of him; rather it replaced what God wanted of him and then it became an enemy of God frustrating him, a man created by God to fulfill God's purpose. God's purpose in creating man is to have man be filled with Him to be His expression, not an expression of human perfection. So the success of Job in human perfection was torn down by God. In this tearing down by God, God tore down Job also. Job was perplexed, not knowing what to do. Then God came in to reveal Himself to Job, indicating that He Himself is what Job should pursue, gain, and express. Then Job had a big turn from pursuing human perfection to pursue God Himself.
If you are a person who is a law-keeper, surely you will appreciate all the proverbs in this book as words of wise men, thinking that they could help you to be a good or even better law-keeper. If so, you just make all the proverbs many, many laws and fall into the snare of keeping the law as many Jews do, who do not know God's purpose in the dispensation of His law, that is, to expose fallen man's weakness.
If you are a person who loves the Lord and pursues Christ, not self-perfection, and who loves the Lord's word in the entire Bible and reads it with a praying spirit, not for the seeking of the doctrine of letters but for seeking the Spirit and word of life, not to get any help for self-cultivation but for the nourishment of your spirit that you may live a Christian life which is perfect not in human virtues but in the divine virtues which are the expressions of the divine attributes, then this book will render you nuggets and gems to strengthen your life of pursuing Christ for the fulfillment of God's economy in producing and building up the Body of Christ.
Furthermore, God does not want us just to seek the knowledge, doctrine, truth, theology, and so-called revelation in letters. God wants us to seek after Him that we may gain Him and that He may fill us up with Himself for His expression. He is the Spirit and we worship Him and contact Him in our spirit. The letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. The word spoken to us by the Lord should become the Spirit and the life to us (John 6:63). If we study the Bible by the way of letters, not by the way of the Spirit and of life, we make the Bible, regardless of what part, a book of letters. Most Christians today have made the New Testament of the Spirit and of life the Old Testament of letters. To Paul the apostle even the Old Testament was like the New Testament, of the Spirit and of life. Too many Christians have made the New Testament proverbs, precepts, exhortations, and instructions of letters. Our life-studies have made all of the Old Testament as the Word of God books of the Spirit and of life. By this we have to realize that what the book of Proverbs would be to us depends upon what kind of persons we are and by what way we take it.
The next matter that we need to see is the sound attitude the New Testament believers should have toward Proverbs.
As New Testament believers, we should believe that Proverbs is a part of the holy word in God's holy Scriptures.
We should realize that Proverbs is the breath of God for us to breathe in that we may receive the life supply from God (2 Tim. 3:16).
Next, we should read Proverbs by being filled with the fullness of God in our spirit (Eph. 5:18-19), in the New Testament Spirit of life (Rom. 8:2), with our regenerated spirit, and by pray-reading to mingle it with spirit and life (cf. John 6:63).
Proverbs has four sections: the collection of Solomon (chs. 1—24), the collection of Hezekiah (chs. 25—29), the word of Agur (ch. 30), and the word of King Lemuel (ch. 31).
